While Friday's close approach isn't a huge deal, Chodas said in an email, "it is a reminder that asteroids can pass very close to our planet and it's important that we find these objects when they do get close."

It will be the second time this week an asteroid buzzes us. On Tuesday, an asteroid passed within 114,000 miles (184,000 kilometers), slightly more than halfway to the moon.

Both of this week's asteroids were discovered Feb. 4 by astronomers at the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona. Last year, more than 2,000 previously unknown near-Earth asteroids were discovered, according to Chodas.

A whopper asteroid named Apophis — estimated at approximately 1,000 feet or more than 300 meters — will pass at just one-tenth the distance between Earth and the moon in 2029. In the meantime, astronomers are on the lookout for asteroids lurking in the cosmic shadows.

"These asteroids are simply too small to be detected until they get really close to our planet," he wrote.

That was the case at Chelyabinsk, Russia on Feb. 15, 2013; the incoming object — an intense fireball as it entered the atmosphere — caught everyone by surprise.